Volume 6 No 4 - Royal Air Force Centre for Air Power Studies

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Less travel means fewer flights and aircraft sales are down,
and nearly 300 civil cargo aircraft now sit in storage in the
desert. Total cargo traffic worldwide fell an unprecedented
9.7 percent last year, billed the worst in the history of air
transport
campaign, providing more rapid and effective control
than previously.
Other factors affect the way we’ll fight. One hears
much talk today of ‘transforming the military’ to
meet new threats. The Persian Gulf War, Bosnia,
Kosovo, and Afghanistan — and, for that matter,
Somalia and Haiti — indicate that traditional
methods, weapons, forces, and strategy will often
be inadvisable. Warfare has changed. Stealth, precision
weapons, and space-based communication
and intelligence-gathering systems are examples of
this new form of war. Certainly, the human element
in war can never be ignored. People make
war, and all their strengths and weaknesses must
be considered. Yet, it would be foolish not to
exploit new technologies that remove part of the
risk and human burden in war. It is not always
necessary for people to suffer. Air and space
power permits new types of strategies that make
war on things rather than on people and that
employ things rather than people. It capitalizes on
the explosion in computer, electronic, and materials
technologies that so characterize the modern
era. This is America’s strength — one that we must
ensure.
Dangers ahead
The terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 (9/11)
served as a wake-up call. Problems simmering at
or below the surface for several years have now
burst forth. The shutdown of air traffic after 9/11
stranded thousands of travelers and disrupted
business. Things are still far from normal. Perhaps
the greatest challenge facing the air and space
nation today is conceptual. Although Americans
have become dependent upon air and space and
although our uniformed leaders realize the domi
nance of air and space power in military operations,
they have yet to think through its implications
or ways of maintaining its momentum.
Air and space power is not merely a collection of
airplanes or spacecraft, although those assets are
certainly essential. It is not even the combination
of those machines with an effective command and
control network and intelligence-gathering capabilities.
Rather, air and space power is the totality
of our military air and space assets from all the
services; our commercial airline industry and the
pilots and mechanics who comprise it; our commercial
air and space industry with its thousands
of engineers and designers; the massive airport
and airways structure stretching across the nation
and, indeed, the world; and our codified doctrine
on how all this power should be employed. All of
these facets are essential for the United States to
remain the air and space nation.
One problem is a tendency to focus on individual
services and weapons or specific airport and
air-traffic-control problems, thus failing to see air
and space power in the broadest sense. Attempts
to look at parts of the problem — ‘tactical’ aircraft,
airlift requirements, or air-traffic-control sequencing
issues — are limited by their myopia.
The tactical-air debate, for example, never
discusses attack helicopters — their cost,
vulnerability, or role in conjunction with fixedwing
air assets. Similarly, airlift requirements are
tied to Army deployments that may or may not
be relevant in the future. Questions remain to be
asked. How does one measure the relative value
of land-based versus sea-based airpower, or rotary
versus fixed wing? What are the trade-offs
between the use of air and space power versus
ground troops or maritime forces? In an even
broader sense, how do we articulate a vision